A lthough the £500 million of resource consequentials that the member references are formally unallocated, the balance is fully committed. When it comes to providing specific support, he will know that when the Aberdeen City Council area was facing a localised lockdown, we provided a package of support of £1 million to ensure that some of the local businesses could get grants.

As normal, we were not informed in advance about the UK Government’s equivalent scheme and the announcement on 9 September about providing grants of up to £1,500 to businesses in England that are impacted by local lockdowns. However, I am pressing the UK Government in the hope that there will be funding implications and consequentials for Scotland that we can use to develop broadly equivalent schemes for sectors that are not able to open, or for localised lockdowns.